Best Skaters Show They’re Vulnerable : Winter sports: The competition indicates no clear-cut favorites for 1994 Games at Lillehammer.

Oksana Baiul can be beaten. So can Brian Boitano. Tonya Harding is back, and that’s a good thing as long as she leaves her pistol at home. Jealous foes of Renee Roca and Gorsha Sur should save their stamps.

Those were among the lessons learned last week at Reunion Arena from Skate America, the first major international figure skating competition of the season en route to next February’s Winter Olympics in Norway. Of them, only the first is a significant revelation.

Baiul, the world champion who will turn 16 next month, has been called a “once-in-a-lifetime skater” by 1960 Olympic gold medalist Carol Heiss-Jenkins, and it is difficult to argue after watching the Ukrainian perform with equal artistry to “Ave Maria” and Michael Jackson in Sunday’s exhibition.

But her competitive efforts were not as magical. That was true in particular of her freestyle program Saturday night, when she fell twice and, as in Prague during last winter’s World Championships, failed to perform any jumps in combination, a crucial element in determining a skater’s mastery.

The judges were not impressed. None of the seven awarded her a score of higher than 5.6 on a 6.0 scale for technical merit. She won because they were even less impressed with her competitors.

“I’m not that happy because I did not accomplish everything I planned to do,” Baiul said. “But I will try and show you next time.”

That also was the attitude of Boitano, who will attempt to win another Olympic gold medal six years after he did it in 1988 at Calgary. He perhaps would have won here if he had been able to perform all the triple jumps in Saturday’s freestyle program that he has planned for later, but he left out two and turned another into a single, enabling his successor as Olympic champion, Ukraine’s Viktor Petrenko, to finish first.

Boitano said he was encouraged because it was the first time in almost two years he has been able to focus on his skating instead of an aching knee.

But the fact remains that he spent a lot of time off the ice with ice on him to soothe pains in his knee, back and groin, and there is no guarantee that his 30-year-old body will hold up through the rigorous workouts he has planned before January’s national championships.

And even if it does, he is no cinch to beat four-time world champion Kurt Browning of Canada or Petrenko, who reasserted himself as a contender with his performance in Skate America.

An injury-free Boitano is likely to be on the victory stand in Norway, perhaps on the highest level, because his technical and freestyle programs are even more challenging and expressive than in 1988, but it will be a competition, perhaps a classic one.

Only someone who enjoys challenging long odds would bet that a U.S. woman will win a medal. National champion Nancy Kerrigan, third in the 1992 Winter Games, does not open her season until this week at the Piruetten, on the Olympic ice in Norway, but she has not proven to be a dependable competitor when under pressure, and everyone else, except for unseasoned 13-year-old Michelle Kwan of Torrance, has been inconsistent.

Harding, however, proved again last week that she is closer to presenting the whole package than other U.S. skaters.

Still the most athletic among them, she continues to improve her style. She probably would have finished higher than third if her freestyle program had not been interrupted because a blade came loose. After taking a timeout to apply a screwdriver to her boot, she was unable to regain her composure.

Therein lies the problem with Harding. Something always seems to happen to her.

This is no fragile ice princess. A grease monkey and occasional drag racer from the poor side of Portland, Ore., she exited early from the U.S. Figure Skating Assn.’s gala after winning the 1991 national championship to play pool in the hotel bar with her friends.

She later finished second in the World Championships and fourth in the 1992 Winter Games. But she since has been engulfed in a series of physical, financial and marital difficulties.

In the most recent episode, police in the Portland suburb of Milwaukee, who responded to an early morning report of a gunshot in an apartment-complex parking lot, were told by Harding and her husband that she accidentally fired a handgun.

But she was in the best shape she has been mentally and physically since 1991 when she arrived in Dallas, and USFSA officials have their fingers crossed that she can maintain that.

They also are anxious about their best dancers, Roca and Sur, who were the subject of a letter to USFSA officials from an anonymous writer who protested the illegality of their free program. Based on the third-place finish despite a fall by Roca and Sur, the judges disagree.

“No one should write an anonymous letter in a democracy,” Sur said. “People wrote anonymous letters in the Soviet Union.”

As a Russian defector, he is familiar with the subject.

That is another story. His attempt to earn U.S. citizenship before the Olympics has resulted in more derogatory letters, these to Congress in a campaign that some believe was started by a relative of one of their dance rivals.

Because Sur has been in the country for three years, instead of the five required for citizenship, he believes it is doubtful Congress will make an exception for him.

“But,” he said, “it’s never over until it’s over.”

Anyone who can quote Yogi Berra should be a citizen, a reporter told him.

“Yogi who?” Sur asked.

That’s OK. Famous catchers are probably not on the INS test.